Attacks on Jews show hate is a sad part of today's society
Law enforcement officials are on scene to investigate an attack on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado, on Sunday. Credit: TNS/Helen H. Richardson
The sickening disease of some people’s hatred of Jews is unending and sadly has become almost an accepted part of the fabric of our society after centuries of mutating [“Island Jewish leaders decry new attacks,” News, June 3]. It is like a ubiquitous pathogen that initially infects as a child, and dwells in the psyche of a hateful mind, watching and waiting to rear its ugly head and strike. Unfortunately, there is no vaccine to protect its host and, most importantly, its intended victim.
Those two young people just beginning their lives together and brutally gunned down in Washington were only its latest victims. It didn’t matter that the victims, a Jewish American woman and a German Messianic Jew, were dedicated to interfaith values and slaughtered while attending an event seeking to provide humanitarian relief to others, including those in Gaza.
Now, 12 people demonstrating solidarity with the hostages in Gaza were burned by a crazed man in Colorado. We keep wringing our hands and beating our chests, but we need to face the harsh reality that unless there is a sea change in the way all humans view Jews and each other, there will never be a cure for the age-old malady of the hatred of Jewish people.
— Joel Reiter, Woodbury
When U.S. campuses rang with chants of “globalize the Intifada” and “resistance by any means necessary,” some university presidents hid behind “free speech.” When Jewish students faced threats and barricades, some administrators mumbled about “context.” Many campus leaders failed to condemn calls for violence against Jews. Their silence was not neutrality; it was permission.
Now, a man echoed slogans as he set Jews on fire. History warns us: Revolutionary rhetoric that festers on university campuses doesn’t stay there. It carried over to German streets in the 1930s, into the Chinese Cultural Revolution’s bloodbath, and Cambodia’s killing fields. Today’s campus chants become tomorrow’s horrific violence.
The blood stains campus presidents who look away. This is their legacy.
— Todd Pittinsky, Port Jefferson
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